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Nor is Mr. Buckle more happy in his second conjecture as to the characteristics of English civilization. He is mistaken in his assertion that "in no great country have literary men been so little connected with government." The direct reverse is the fact. With the exception of Shakspeare, we cannot call to mind any author of the least celebrity or influence who was not connected with the government in this country. Chaucer, first "one of the valets of the king's chamber" and pensioned by the Sovereign, then "Comptroller of the Customs in the Port of London," "employed on a secret mission" to the Continent; "Comptroller of the Petty Customs," in addition to his former office; Member of Parliament for the County of Kent, and Clerk of the Works to the King,2 was surely sufficiently "connected with Government" to have had his independence fettered, if any thing could have restrained the flight of his muse. More, and Bacon, and Clarendon, were Chancellors. The writings of the former are unfortunately chiefly polemical, but will still be read with pleasure by all who delight in nervous English, and had in their time, undoubtedly, a great influence upon the literary civilization of the nation. What we are indebted in philosophy and history to other Chancellors, every reader will recognise. Add to these the names of Sir Thomas Elyot, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, and John Milton, the secretary of Cromwell, and the writer of many of the state papers of his time, and we regard with astonishment the assertion of Mr. Buckle that "in no great country have literary men been so little connected with government." It is to our minds a cause and a sign of the freedom of the English government, ay, for ages before the Habeas Corpus Act was passed, and the Bill of Rights presented, that the great writers of the people were at the same time the great politicians of the nation. Connexion with Government did not enchain the mind or render servile the pen of Elyot or Milton. It did not restrain the spirit of Bacon and Spenser, it subjected not the fancy of Sidney and of Chaucer; but it maintained, though it did not give, freedom and dignity, lofty aim and practical direction, to the political life of England. What France lost by this want of "connection with Government," on the part of her literary men, we can only conjecture; yet, since Mr. Buckle has compared these two countries, and has reversed the fact in relation to them, it is sufficient for us to note that Rabelais and Descartes, Montaigne and Pascal, and Charron, might have exerted a more lasting influence over the French nation if of them it could be said, as it can be said of More and Bacon, Milton, Raleigh, and Clarendon, not that they were "connected with Government," merely, but that the Government of the country was largely directed by them. If we turn from the reasons which induced Mr. Buckle to select

1 P. 215, note.

2 See Life, in Bell's edition of Chaucer, London, 1854.

English civilization as the fittest theme for his pen, and examine into the alleged causes of civilization itself, we are met with similar instances of hasty and unsatisfactory generalization. The fact of the freedom of the will he regards as the invention of nomadic life; the abundance of game ranging uncontrolled in the prairies of the West and the steppes of the East, taken without labour by the hungry hunter, naturally suggested the idea of universal freedom, and hence the theological doctrine of 'free will.' On the other hand, the unvarying round of the seasons, the unbroken succession of seed-time and harvest, exhausted fields recovering their fertility after a definite fallow, and the toil of the husbandman oftentimes rendered useless by unpropitious weather,—this looked like an iron government and a superintending fate, and hence 'predestination." Both, indeed, are developements, the first by the metaphysician, the last of the theologian,2-nomadic life, we presume, fostering the former class of thinkers, agricultural pursuits the latter. Nothing, we believe, is gained by these conjectures; they are the offspring of pure fancy, and are alike opposed to philosophy and to history. But this is not an exceptional instance of our author's love for pushing analysis to the verge of the ludicrous. He is equally ready with a theory to account for the superstition which he discovers in southern countries,-as though the high latitudes were peculiarly free from this, it springs, he tells us, from the frequency of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and pestilences, which making death more common lead men to seek supernatural aid."3 Acuter observers have marked the tendency of all this to make men more reckless, and less conscious of the Divine Presence, and less prone, as Mr. Buckle would say, to superstition. Equally strange is the confusion which, in our author's contempt for metaphysics, we find in his notions as to consciousness and conscience. We are told of the "doctrine of the supremacy of consciousness, on which the advocates of free will are compelled to construct the whole of their theory," in which dictum we find our author mistaking one of the phenomena of psychology for a fact in ethics. A glance at the tables of the political economists is sufficient to satisfy him that suicide is the work of necessity,5 that crime is in no case referable to individual vice, and that marriage springs from no higher law than the mysterious one of the corn averages. In his pages, in short, almost all things are traced to physical causes.8 Like Mr. Hathaway in Longfellow's tale, he attributes great effects to lofty mountains and broad rivers. They create, according to him, imagination itself. They are the final cause of all poetry. Though if there be truth in history, the 'Paradise Lost' is indebted less to the Andes and Niagara than to the Barbican and Bunhill Row. We do not dis

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1 P. 9.

5 P. 25.

2 P. 11.
6 P. 27.

3 P. 115. 7 P. 29.

4 P. 16.
8 P. 11.

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pute the fact of the influence of external nature, we only question its supremacy. Our author indeed scarcely acknowledges any higher law. With him, GOD is "a magnificent notion," and religion a thing "produced" by this or that state of existence, "organized" by this or that condition of humanity, or formed "by that purely transcendental process, of which in every age glimpses have been granted to a few gifted minds." Indeed, in his zeal to subject all things to material agents, he is blind even to the commonest laws of physics. According to him,

"The food consumed by man produces two, and only two effects necessary to his existence. These are, first, to supply him with that animal heat, without which the functions of life would stop; and secondarily, to repair the waste constantly taking place in his tissues, that is, in the mechanism of his frame."-P. 50.

This is no hasty assertion; it seems to be regarded as a favourite discovery by Mr. Buckle. A page or two further on, he repeats this conclusion, and tells us that

"The objects of food are, as we have seen, only two, namely, to keep up the warmth of the body, and repair the waste in the tissues."P. 53.

In other words, the sole object of food is to repair the loss of heat and substance ! Mr. Buckle does not inform us from what source the bones and sinews, the blood and bulk of the adult man are derived. The food taken by the infant had surely a larger scope and higher ends than the preservation of the child in all the weakness and dimensions of babyhood. If the loss of heat and the waste of the tissues is all that food can do, whence come growth and manly firmness? How does nature, not recruit, but give larger fibre and the bones needed to support the frame of mature life? Mr. Buckle denies that this comes from food. We ask, to what physical agent are we indebted for the fact that we can be no longer cribbed in our first bed and swathed by our first clothes?

To rise with our author from the causes of individual life to the fountain of political existence, we find, that "of the two primary causes of civilization, the fertility of the soil is the one which in the ancient world exercised most influence."3 The two causes he elsewhere states to be climate and soil. Now it would have been nearer the truth, and have been sufficient for the purposes of history, if Mr. Buckle had been content with pointing out the dependence of civilization upon a dense, or a comparatively dense, population. It is true that such a population will generally be found planted in a fertile soil; but it by no means follows that a fertile soil will always have a dense population. Had our author remem

VOL. XX.

1 P. 239.

2 P. 324.
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3 P. 46.

bered this, we should have been saved from that specimen of empiricism by which he attempts to defend this large generalization of his. Egypt was the seat of ancient civilization, because the country is "irrigated by the waters of the Nile, the overflowing of which covers the sand with a rich alluvial deposit, that yields to labour the most abundant and indeed the most extraordinary returns. The consequence is, that in that spot wealth was rapidly accumulated, the cultivation of knowledge quickly followed, and this narrow strip of land became the seat of Egyptian civilization." Much the same natural feature he finds in India, Peru, and Mexico, though in the last-named countries the accuracy of this statement is more questionable. Accordingly, there he is not surprised at finding the traces and the ruins of past civilization. But there is a country under much the same parallel of latitude as these: with superior fertility of soil, larger rivers, vaster grandeur of nature. Here, according to the theory of Mr. Buckle, that soil and climate generate civilization, we should have expected to meet with an ancient and firmly seated empire, an exuberant population, or the signs at least of material greatness. And yet Brazil is still covered, for the most part, with impenetrable forests, and silent to the footsteps of man. The way in which Mr. Buckle accounts for this is at once a specimen of his graphic style, and of his inconsequential reasoning.

"The trade wind blowing on the eastern coast of South America, and proceeding from the east, crosses the Atlantic Ocean, and therefore reaches the land surcharged with the vapours accumulated in its passage. These vapours, on touching the shore, are at periodical intervals condensed into rain; and as their progress westward is checked by that gigantic chain of the Andes, which they are unable to pass, they pour the whole of their moisture on Brazil, which in consequence is often deluged by the most destructive torrents. This abundant supply, being aided by that vast river system peculiar to the eastern parts of America, and being also accompanied by heat, has stimulated the soil into an activity unequalled in any other part of the world. Brazil, which is nearly as large as the whole of Europe, is covered with a vegetation of incredible profusion. Indeed, so rank and luxuriant is the growth, that nature seems to riot in the very wantonness of power. A great part of this immense country is filled with dense and tangled forests, whose noble trees, blossoming in unrivalled beauty, and exquisite with a thousand hues, throw out their produce in endless prodigality. On their summits are perched birds of gorgeous plumage, which nestle in their dark and lofty recesses. Below, their base and trunks are crowded with brushwood, creeping plants, innumerable parasites, all swarming with life. There too are myriads of insects of every variety; reptiles of strange and singular form; serpents and lizards, spotted with deadly beauty; all of which find means of existence in this vast workshop and

1 P. 45.

repository of nature. And that nothing may be wanting to this land of marvels, the forests are skirted by enormous meadows, which, reeking with heat and moisture, supply nourishment to countless herds of wild cattle, that browse and fatten on their herbage; while the adjoining plains, rich in another form of life, are the chosen abodes of the subtlest and most ferocious animals, which prey on each other, but which it might almost seem no human power can hope to extirpate."-Pp. 93, 94.

Now, with such a soil and so advantageous a climate,—with all the ingredients which, in Mr. Buckle's estimation, entered into and effected ancient civilization, and all these in richest profusion,soil, food, and climate more favourable than on the banks of the Nile or Euphrates, on the slopes of the Andes or the table lands of Mexico,-why, we may well ask, are there no ruins of social life to be met with in the forests of Brazil, no trace of ancient cities and ancient civilization on the margins or at the estuaries of her noble rivers? Surely, we exclaim, a soil which nourishes inexhaustible crops, a climate which is favourable for the support and increase of man, a country where food is produced almost without care and labour, must-if, indeed, soil, and food, and climate be all that is needed to ensure civilization-have acquired great renown, and been distinguished for very early advances in social economy! Fact overturns all such fancies. Brazil is almost as barren of man as the most sterile land, and no tradition of any civilization in olden time is to be met with. For this Mr. Buckle frames an exceptional theory which should have led him to doubt the soundness of his former conclusion. The soil, it seems, is too fertile, the climate too propitious!

"Such is the flow and abundance of life by which Brazil is marked above all the other countries of the earth. But amid this pomp and splendour of nature, no place is left for man. He is reduced to in

significance by the majesty with which he is surrounded. The forces that oppose him are so formidable, that he has never been able to make head against them, never able to rally against their accumulated pressure. The whole of Brazil, notwithstanding its immense apparent advantages, has always remained entirely uncivilized; its inhabitants wandering savages, incompetent to resist those obstacles which the very bounty of nature has put in their way."-P. 95.

We have no confidence in theories which are framed to account for every individual peculiarity, or in general conclusions which fail in the very instance to which they ought to be most applicable. Had not Mr. Buckle been ambitious of tracing all things to their elemental principles, it would have sufficed to have told us that civilization, as its very word implies, is dependent upon a concentrated population; and then, if so obvious a truth needs to be

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